Bloodthirsty Liberal

As Israel prepares to release the most violent and vile Jew-haters among its prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, what will this mean for Shalit as he lives the rest of his life?

He has done nothing wrong, and has suffered horribly for his country, but as we work our way through the potentialities of such a prisoner exchange, how will he feel if the worst happens and one of the Hamass maggots kills again? How will his parents feel? I don’t have the wisdom to know.

He did not volunteer for service; all Israelis are required to serve. His personal wishes are not known. But as welcome as freedom surely is, who among us could feel unalloyed joy that our freedom was bought with the blood of others, past and likely future? How will Shalit’s parent be able to look in the eyes of parents of others who may be killed by one or more of these proven Arab killers?

I guess that’s more than one question, but it all boils down to one moral enquiry.

BTL already commented on this, but I just wanted to point out that appeasement doesn’t work. Hear that, Moonbats? Appeasement invites aggression.

The media reports I’ve heard suggest that Iran was planning restaurant bombs. We too could have experienced what it is like to live with truly crazy neighbors blowing themselves up. Crisis averted this time.

I wonder what Obama will say about it? I wonder if the Kidz protesting Wall Street will notice?

- Aggie

I count three lies in that title alone: no freedom, no information, and no act.

President Obama’s administration has improved in its responsiveness to Freedom of Information requests, but still has a ways to ago, according to a new report on the issue.

Of 90 federal agencies equipped to process requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, slightly more than half have taken at least some steps to fulfill Obama’s goal to improve government transparency, according to the study by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and the Knight Foundation.

Though 49 agencies and departments complied with the study’s authors, 17 others – including the Transportation Department and U.S. Postal Service – provided no documents and two withheld information. Another 17 agencies – including the departments of Commerce, Energy, Justice and State – provided no final response, and four smaller agencies never acknowledged receipt of the FOIA request. The figures have improved significantly from last year, when just 13 of 90 agencies complied.

“At this rate, it’ll be the end of his term before the agencies do what Obama asked them to do on the first day,” said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive.

Still, it sounded pretty at the time:

“The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears,” Obama said in the FOIA memo, adding later that “In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.”

…

[T]he Obama Administration “will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” The order directs the yet-to-be-named chief technology officer to work with the OMB director to develop an “Open Government Directive” in the next four months.

That was then.

This is now:

Why would the Obama administration who boasted open and transparent discussions of such a sensitive subject as healthcare close the door to the opportunity to present its factual case to the American people? Messaging anyone? Nope.

Complying with the records request from the House Energy and Commerce Committee “would constitute a vast and expensive undertaking” and could “implicate longstanding executive branch confidentiality interests,” White House lawyer Robert Bauer wrote the committee.

Since when did this regime shy away from anything “vast and expensive”? They’re drawn to vastness and expense like moths to a flame.

If you can’t win on the issues, go negative.

In our post-partisan world, the dems are flipping out and doing what they do best – ripping their opponents apart and eating the entrails.

Democratic candidates across the country are opening a fierce offensive of negative advertisements against Republicans, using lawsuits, tax filings, reports from the Better Business Bureau and even divorce proceedings to try to discredit their opponents and save their Congressional majority.

Opposition research and attack advertising are used in almost every election, but these biting ads are coming far earlier than ever before, according to party strategists. The campaign has intensified in the last two weeks as early voting begins in several states and as vulnerable incumbents try to fight off an onslaught of influences by outside groups.

As they struggle to break through with economic messages, many Democrats are deploying the fruits of a yearlong investigation into the business and personal histories of Republican candidates in an effort to plant doubts about them and avoid having races become a national referendum on the performance of President Obama and his party.

Guess what? People don’t care if Christine O’Donnell flirted with witchcraft in high school because they have bigger things to worry about – like paying the bills. They don’t have jobs, guys. There isn’t much else to discuss.

Mild mannered Republicans reply:

“Our strongest piece of opposition research on Democrats is their voting records,” said Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “While character assassination seems to be the strategy for Democrats this year, the American people are supporting Republican candidates because they are providing an alternative.”

Polite and factual.

If the American public is dumb enough to fall for these clowns after they provoked the financial meltdown in the real estate sector that led to the crash, and then wasted billions… or is it trillions… of tax payer money on goofy PC programs that failed, then the American public deserves more of the same.

Elections have consequences.

- Aggie

That there’s corruption—and it’s Democratic?

There’s a 900-pound elephant in the room in Washington named Corruption. The media don’t seem to have noticed it’s there — because the pachyderm is actually a donkey.

When Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., was exposed in the fall of 2006 sending sleazy text messages to male teenage congressional pages, the establishment press made sure it cast a heavy shadow on the entire Republican establishment. Again and again it was noted that then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other congressional GOP leaders obviously knew about Foley but did little or nothing.

Where are they now that Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., is undone after unwelcome sexual advances toward a junior male staffer? House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., admits to knowing of the allegations, so where are the headlines like those in 2006 warning that this and other scandals could doom Democrats this November?

And make no mistake, there are plenty of other Democratic scandals.

…

• President Obama’s shady nomination on Wednesday of the brother of Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, a swing vote on health reform, to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

• The forced — but only temporary — and long overdue suspension of Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., from his powerful perch as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee many months after it became known that he failed to pay 20 years of back taxes on a Caribbean villa, on top of tax issues related to four rent-controlled apartments in Harlem used by his campaign, plus other newly revealed House rules violations.

• The “Louisiana Purchase” of $300 million in exclusive Medicaid funds for Louisiana to buy the support of a swing voter, Sen. Mary Landrieu, for health reform.

• The similar “Cornhusker Kickback” of $100 million in exclusive Medicaid funding for Nebraska to secure the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson for ObamaCare.

• President Obama’s “Union Carve-Out” to shield his Big Labor supporters from health reform’s tax on more-expensive so-called Cadillac health plans.

• The failure of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner since 2001 to pay nearly $40,000 in his Social Security and Medicare taxes because he worked for the International Monetary Fund, which conveniently didn’t withhold those taxes as U.S. firms do.

• The Democrats’ massive stimulus bill last year, practically written by the party’s supporters in Big Labor, with construction projects forced to use union members and pay union wages — in spite of the fact that nonunion workers make up close to 85% of the country’s construction work force.

That’s just the national scene. New York State alone deserves its own chapter in this sordid tale. And Massachusetts? OMG, the last three Speakers of the House have resigned, sealed, and been delivered to jail (metaphorically speaking).

They are so sophisticated and I just love the food and beer.

Ex-Nazi guard freed on technicality in Austrian court
By (Reuters)

A former Nazi concentration camp guard who was deported from the United States on Thursday is now a free man because he cannot be prosecuted in Austria, the Austrian justice ministry said on Friday.

Josias Kumpf, who by his own admission, aided in the killing of 8,000 Jews the Trawniki labor camp in Nazi occupied Poland in 1943 , arrived in Austria on Thursday after the United States deported him following the revocation of his citizenship.

Austrian justice ministry spokeswoman Katharina Swoboda said Vienna had warned U.S. authorities in the past that Austria would be unable to prosecute Kumpf because the statute of limitations relating to his crimes had expired.

“We have always pointed out to the United States that he cannot be charged here with the crimes of which he is accused,” Swoboda said.

The main reason was that Kumpf was younger than 20 at the time of the crimes.

The fact Kumpf had never been an Austrian citizen, and that the crimes which he is accused of were not committed in Austria, also made prosecution in Austria impossible, she said.

Kumpf was born in the part of Yugoslavia that is now Serbia, as a member of the ethnic German minority there. After joining the SS as a guard in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, he moved on to Trawniki in German-occupied Poland.

The U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday that Kumpf helped guard around 8,000 Jewish prisoners — including some 400 children — who were shot and killed in pits at Trawniki in a special operation in November 1943.

The department cited Kumpf as saying his assignment was to watch for victims who were still “halfway alive” or “convulsing” and “shoot them to kill” if they attempted to escape.

Kumpf was deported to Austria because it was the country from which he came when he entered the United States in 1956, she said.

Swoboda said with his U.S. citizenship revoked, Kumpf was now stateless and had no residence permit in Austria, which technically made him an illegal alien.

But since he could not be extradited to another country, he would be able to stay on. He would have to register his address.

Pass the Wiener schnitzel, please.

- Aggie

Check out this headline

Israel claims woman hurt in rocket attack

JERUSALEM (CNN) — A woman was injured Saturday when a rocket landed in northern Israel, a spokesman for the Israeli police said.

The Israel Defense Forces fired artillery toward the source of the fire, an army spokesman said, but he could not say from where the rocket originated.

Officials said the rocket landed in the Western Galilee region of northwestern Israel, which borders Lebanon.

The Lebanese army said two rockets were fired from Lebanon toward Israel, but they failed to reach Israeli territory. According to the Lebanese army, the rockets landed east of Naqoura, a coastal town just north of the border with Israel.

Israel claims??? Israel does not have a history of lying about rocket attacks, so there is absolutely no reason to write it that way. The media just drips with bias. That must be what they mean when they talk about “professional ethics“.

Update: They double-suck. They could have published this photo, but chose not to:

Security officials Sat. removing the remains of a Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon that struck northern Israel. (Yaron Kaminsky)

I suppose that is an alleged rocket? Huh? Are you listening CNN?
- Aggie

We’ve already read about Eric Holder’s problems at home; now we learn that he’s bringing the Chicago Way to D.C.:

Barack Obama’s Attorney General candidate Eric Holder hires two Senate staffers, still working on the public’s dime, to guide him through the Senate nomination process — yet we haven’t heard one word of objection about the clear conflict of interest from the GOP (non)-leadership.

…

Since when do current, sitting Senate staffers get to shepherd presidential nominees through the confirmation process? Where are the checks and balances on the ability of two top Senate aides to advise Holder at the same time they are expected to assist their bosses in providing independent assessments of their client’s qualifications?

…

Jennifer Rubin at PJM adds:

A Capitol Hill insider had this to say:

I can’t think of another example of a current Senate staffer facilitating a nominee’s confirmation. If the Senate is really conducting an independent review of the nominee, doesn’t this arrangement undermine it? Would you ever let a judge’s legal clerk act as the lawyer for a defendant? That’s why we have conflict of interest restrictions for lawyers.

Am I alone in detecting a sense of privilege among Team Obama? They invent an office (with its own logo), they think they can hand-pick their guy’s successor, they want to move into guest digs early, they requisition Senate staffers.

The one thing you can say with absolute certainty about the Office of the President of the United States is that if you don’t know humility when you take office, you will surely learn it, and probably sooner rather than later.

Obama’s pratfall from grace should be one of the most spectacular ever witnessed.

May he not have the luck of Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Is it really racist to bring this up?

“I remember my mother’s pulling me from the tangle of sheets and running to the kitchen where my father stood. Through the large windows overlooking the yard, all we could see was the bright glow of flames below. We didn’t leave our burning house for fear of who might be waiting outside,” wrote Murtagh recently in City Journal.

It wasn’t personal. John’s dad was a judge presiding over a trial of some Black Panthers. John still remembers the red graffiti on the sidewalk the next morning: “Free the Panther 21; The Viet Cong Have Won; Kill the Pigs.”

As best he recalls, Bernardine Dohrn, who’s now Ayers’ wife, first claimed credit for bombing John’s home in 1970.

Read it all. Then ask yourself what it would take to get you to befriend Bill Ayers. What could he do for your pocketbook or your career that would make it worthwhile?

And, while we’re on the subject, think about your own life for a minute. If you were safely tucked away on a desert island somewhere, how would I be able to know who you are? If I wanted to understand you, but couldn’t get to know you personally, how would I do it? Could I talk to your friends? Your colleagues? Your religious leaders? Your business associates? Your relatives? Yes, that is how I could come to understand you. Now, can you think of anyone that you know that boasts such a rogues gallery of friends, colleagues, religious leaders and business associates as Barack Obama?

I thought not.

- Aggie